1. Field of the Invention
The present disclosure relates to tracking User Equipment (UE) sessions, and more particularly, to providing scalable selective and real-time General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) Tunneling Protocol (GTP) session tracking using distributed processing techniques.
2. Description of the Related Art
Traditionally, mobile communication networks such as Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) employed circuit switching architectures whereby hardware circuits establish connections between a calling and a called party throughout the network. This circuit switching architecture was improved upon by a General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) architecture, which incorporated packet-switching technologies to transport data as packets without the establishment of dedicated circuits. Notably, the GPRS architecture was employed as a supplement or overlay upon the GSM architecture and still uses circuit switching technologies of the underlying GSM architecture.
A 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) organization improved upon the GPRS architectures and provided guidelines for implementing new system architectures for mobile communication networks. In particular, the 3GPP community modeled its network on the packet switching approach of the GPRS architecture and used an IP (Internet Protocol) based routing for all data. The 3GPP architecture is generally referred to as Evolved 3GPP Packet Switched Domain—also known as the Evolved Packet System (EPS).
When designing, maintaining, and/or operating any communication network—e.g., GSM networks, GPRS networks, EPS networks, etc.—data flows are monitored and analyzed to provide important insight into potential network problems as well as provide insight into a current state of the network Quality of Service parameters, and the like. Such network monitoring can be used to address existing network problems as well as to improve overall network design.
However, with an increasingly large consumer adoption of mobile devices, the amount of network data to be monitored quickly exceeds current hardware and software capabilities of traditional monitoring devices. Some conventional attempts to meet the need for network monitoring in such a high bandwidth environment merely increase an amount of dedicated monitoring hardware, which also requires increasingly complex software to provide appropriate control and coordination. In turn, such conventional attempts quickly become cost prohibitive. Thus, a need remains to provide cost-effective systems and methods that selectively monitor data in high bandwidth environments. Such systems and methods can further employ accurate real-time monitoring in a cost effective fashion using distributed systems.